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Spending on cloud services by small to midsized companies will double by 2015 to $95 billion, cloud-hosting firm Parallels predicts. "Looking at the global IT landscape in 2012, we see SMBs' participation in the cloud market spanning the full gamut -- from having a mature cloud services market to needing education about what cloud services are," the report says.

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Small and midsized businesses are embracing the cloud as a platform strategy, according to a Techaisle study that cites seven outcomes regarding cloud use in the SMB market. Businesses are using the cloud to be more competitive and boost speed, rather than just to save money, the report says.

Small and midsized enterprises can make use of Big Data analytics because of decreasing storage costs, cloud systems and an increasing number of service providers offering tools, Michael Passingham writes. One aspect that holds them back in implementing Big Data is data security. "The takeaway for small and medium businesses is that we'll increasingly see these applications hosted in the cloud, but with the major caveat 'What do we do about sensitive data?' " said Tony Baer of Ovum.

Many small and midsized businesses have multiple operating sites, creating an opportunity for software-as-a-service offerings, writes Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics. "Offerings now exist that provide a fully integrated suite of capability for allowing distributed workgroups to operate effectively," Vile writes. "This includes email, instant messaging, office tools, document-centric collaboration, pretty much every form of conferencing and even IP telephony in some cases."

Receiving and processing customer payments is a job all its own for small-business owners and independent contractors. Thanks to emerging mobile payment solutions, however, fewer SMBs are finding themselves in a financial lurch while they wait for that check to arrive, this article notes. Services such as PayPal Here, PaySimple and Intuit GoPayment are changing the game for many SMBs by enabling them to convert sales into cash flow in as little as a day.

Small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly turning to smartphones and mobile-PC devices such as tablets, according to research from AMI Partners, and that's a boon to third-party providers that can help SMBs manage and secure these devices. About 3.5 million U.S.-based SMBs use smartphones and 700,000 use tablets, AMI says, but those numbers are predicted to increase 40% and 85%, respectively, over the next year.